"Perhaps," said Monsieur Louis, "madame does not understand. Basle lies outside France though close to the frontier--therefore, once there, all French people are safe."
"The Colonel of all King Louis' Guards is surely safe anywhere in France. Monsieur must be thinking of the safety of some other person than himself. In any case I could never believe monsieur's own safety, at such a moment as this above all, would induce him to voyage to Basle."
"Madame has judged aright. I have no intention of quitting France."
"Ah!" the marquise exclaimed, a dash of colour springing to her cheeks at these words. Then she added, "It is very well. Monsieur should be in France now. Especially, now."
The other took no notice of this remark and, at this moment, La Truaumont spoke for the first time.
"Emérance," he said, addressing her without any ordinary prefix, "you understand well enough why Basle is chosen for the rendezvous. All those who will accompany Madame la Duchesse from Paris to Nancy, and from Nancy to Basle, will leave her there, unless the young English fiancé of Mlle. D'Angelis chooses to go farther. To go even to Geneva or across the Alps. Being in no wise concerned in our hopes and aspirations there is no reason why he should not do so. He knows nothing of our plans, he will never be permitted to know. Indeed," continued La Truaumont grimly, "if he were to know of them, if he were ever to learn them, the knowledge would have to be dearly paid for."
"It would," Fleur de Mai muttered, as he curled up his great moustache, while the expression on the faces of all the others--from the grin on that of Van den Enden to the calm, far-off look in the eyes of Emérance, showed that La Truaumont had clearly expressed that which was in all their minds.
[CHAPTER III]
"The Great Attempt," which has been more than once referred to in the previous pages, was nothing less than a plot devised to remove Louis XIV. from the throne of France and to place upon that throne Louis, Prince and Chevalier de Beaurepaire, a man who had been the chosen playmate of the King in his infancy and was now the Colonel of all his Majesty's regiments of Guards.
The infamy of this treachery--infamous as treachery always is!--was doubly so in such a case as this, and it is not, therefore, surprising that all the principals concerned in it were spoken of by other names than their own; that meetings were hardly ever held twice in the same place, and that, as had happened before now, many such meetings had even taken place outside of France itself. Amongst those who thus masqueraded under such aliases--and they were many--were the Prince de Beaurepaire who was always spoken and written of as "Monsieur Louis," Van den Enden as the Seigneur de Châteaugrand, Emérance as the Marquise de Villiers-Bordéville--and countless noblemen in Normandy who did so under other sobriquets.